The Extended Metaphor Soliloquy in "As You Like It"

Summary: In William Shakespeare's "As You Like It," his famous "All the world's a stage" soliloquy is an extended metaphor for life with each stage representing a part of life that one must experience.

The primary concern that William Shakespeare reflects throughout the "All the world's a stage" soliloquy in "As You Like It" relates to the way that people think about you and their judgements on you based on certain characteristics which you may possess constantly influences how you think and thus how you behave, and furthers the essence of who you are. Shakespeare deconstructs the human life into seven stages throughout his extended metaphor, each stage relating to certain parts of life which one must inevitably go through. Throughout the latter half of the poem, the reader consequently surmises that certain characteristics gained through the experience that one goes through in each stage never leave you and form an inherent part of who you are, such as childishness in the infant stage.

Shakespeare employs several techniques in order to convey the aforementioned concern. The entire soliloquy is an extended metaphor...